War Girls

by Adele Geras

  Hannah had said no more than, ‘She swears it’s true.’

  But Alice’s father had explained, ‘Mrs Short is a mother.

  These women are consumed with terrors for their beloved sons. Their minds are partially unhinged, their imaginations aflame. Small wonder that they see and hear things that aren’t there.’

  And yet … And yet …

  For next time Alice had gone to see her friend, Hannah slipped into the room where Mrs Short was sleeping away her grief and took the letter that had come from Peter’s commanding officer. Proudly she showed it to Alice, and with good reason, for the letter spoke of what a fine young man Peter had been, and how his fellow soldiers loved and trusted him, how brave he was, how quick and painless his death.

  Then Alice felt the coldest shiver down her spine. ‘But here the Colonel says it happened in the dawn attack on the eighteenth.’

  Hannah took back the letter, carefully refolding it along creased lines. ‘It was a mighty battle,’ she confided. ‘My uncle was in Dover. He came home saying he had heard the rumble of the guns across the Channel all day.’

  Alice persisted. ‘But the eighteenth is when your mother heard your brother’s voice! And I remember that because you came to tell me as I was laying out the marrows for our Harvest Festival.’

  Hannah looked up. ‘What better evening to come and speak to her?’

  So easy to believe! But Alice could almost hear the scathing words her father would have had to force himself not to say: ‘What better evening to imagine it, after she had been told the bloody barrage had gone on for hours?’

  She only said to Hannah, ‘So you do truly believe that the dead can return?’

  Now Hannah was embarrassed. But bravely she told her friend, ‘I have no reason to doubt it. And Mother’s not the only one. Ask Mrs Gregory.’

  ‘From Wendle Post Office?’

  ‘Yes. Both her sons were killed on the same day. She was bereft. But then a friend invited her to meet a lady in London. “She has the gift,” she told Mrs Gregory. “This lady can pierce the veil between this world and the next.” So Mrs Gregory took the train and went to the lady’s house. She was called Marie-Claire, and Mrs Gregory said she welcomed her as if they were old friends, and pressed her to a reviving glass of sherry after her journey. Then two more strangers joined them. One was a man whose daughter had died two months before. He didn’t speak about it, but Marie-Claire whispered to Mrs Gregory that there had been an explosion in a shell factory and her poor body was never found. The other visitor was a mother like herself.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘It was so simple. They all sat round a little wooden table, “For all the world,” said Mrs Gregory, “as if we were about to play a hand of bridge.” They laid their palms flat with their fingers spread to form a circle, and Marie-Claire warned them that it was most important not to pull away. She said the energy ran round the ring of hands and mustn’t be broken or it might tug her over onto the wrong side.’

  ‘The wrong side?’

  ‘Through the veil of death into the other world.’

  Again the shiver ran down Alice’s back. Could it be possible? Then death would seem so much less black. Why, Alice might even get to see her own dear mother again! Hear that soft voice! Feel those warm, comforting arms – and, for the first time ever, see that look of grim certainty drop from her father’s face.

  Keenly, she asked her friend, ‘What happened next? Did Mrs Gregory say?’

  Hannah took up the story. ‘She told my mother that they all sat quietly for a while. The man who’d lost his daughter was weeping soundlessly, but couldn’t brush away his tears for fear of breaking the circle. And Mrs Gregory admitted that though her heart went out to him as someone in as much anguish as herself, still she was thinking herself a fool to have gone all the way to London to see and hear nothing. Then there was a knock.’

  ‘A knock?’

  ‘A sharp rap on the table. But no one’s hands had moved – no, not one inch, said Mrs Gregory. Marie-Claire threw back her head and asked, “Who has come back to us? Make yourself known.” And instantly there came a strange rustling sound. Mrs Gregory insisted that all the hands were in plain sight and never moved. And yet this rustling noise spread out from Marie-Claire, “As if,” she told my mother, “all manner of tiny spirits might be whispering.”’

  Alice had heard her father ranting on about ‘these charlatans’ often enough to feel obliged to say, ‘Perhaps her petticoats …? Or something clever tucked inside her bodice?’

  ‘Perhaps. But then she told the father that his daughter sent her love and urged him not to grieve because her pain was over. Only happiness had greeted her in her new place and she was not alone; she’d met her aunt. The man looked puzzled and said, “My daughter has no aunts!” Then he thought a moment and said, “Wait! That would be her godmother. My daughter always called her ‘aunt’ – and she passed over only a year ago.” Marie-Claire smiled and told him that “the recently translated”, as she called them, were often first to comfort newcomers. And, anyway, in that strange other world to come, relationships often seem hazy.’

  Once again Alice could imagine her father’s contemptuous snort. ‘Oh, how convenient!’

  But, curious, she asked her friend, ‘So was the poor man satisfied?’

  ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘That it was not some trickery, like my father says.’

  She’d touched a sore spot. Hannah’s eyes flashed. ‘And does your father also say my mother is mistaken in recognising Peter’s voice?’

  Alice could only say, ‘My father’s bound to question anything that doesn’t fit with his beliefs.’

  ‘So he could never see a spirit plain if it stood right beside him!’

  Alice put out a soothing hand. ‘Finish your story about Mrs Gregory. Was there a message from her boys?’

  ‘No, not that day. But she is going back. And she is filled with hope.’

  Hope. Was it an accident her father took this as the theme for his next sermon? He climbed the steps into his high, carved pulpit and took a moment to survey the scattering of black hats and silvered heads. He said, ‘My text is from the book of Romans: “Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation”.’ To Alice, as she drifted off into her own thoughts, it seemed the usual weave of exhortation and reproach: ‘“Hope” in the Bible is not what we mean when we say we “hope” that the fine weather will hold or that our bread dough will rise. No, it means “trust”. When we hope in the Lord, we trust in him completely. We know he cares about the tiniest thing that happens to every one of us, and so …’

  Only a pew or two behind her, Alice could hear odd, sharp intakes of breath. Was someone stifling tears? She dared not turn to look – not with her father looming above them, running his fingertips along the edge of the pulpit in that nervous habit which only stopped when he at last bowed his head and, in the deeper voice he used for prayer, signalled the end of his sermon. ‘In the name of the Father …’

  Now she could turn.

  It was Mrs Coral.

  Oh, please no! Not her son too! Not big, soft, gentle Sam!

  The small black heap of misery was slumped in the pew beside Mrs Parry’s housekeeper. They were the only two women left to serve in The Lodge now that the younger maids had gone to work in factories, or on the land. Her face was grim and her nose raw from dabbing. She barely could be recognised as the kind, capable woman Mrs Parry had sent across the village to watch over Alice’s mother through those last, long, sad nights. More than once Alice had woken with a start of dread, and padded down the icy corridor to be so calmly comforted and then led back to bed by Mrs Coral.

  She loved the woman, so she couldn’t stop herself. As soon as her father had dismissed his flock with the blessing, she hurried down the aisle to clutch at Mrs Coral’s companion’s arm. ‘Is it.?’

  Mrs Parry’s housekeeper turned. ‘Sam, yes.’

  ‘I am so very sorry.’

 
The dark eyes narrowed and the words were spat. ‘Ah, well. We must all do what Reverend Milner orders us, mustn’t we? We must just trust.’

  The force of it was such a shock that Alice stumbled back. How could this woman beside poor Mrs Coral show such contempt for what her father believed? And in his own church too!

  She was so keen to get away, but Mrs Parry was behind her. ‘Alice, the socks and comforters you’ve knitted for the sale of work – when will you bring them?’

  Oh, when indeed! For none of them were finished. She’d started with such determination. (Those poor men in those sodden, flooded trenches! The socks rotting on their feet!) But she had slipped so many stitches that she’d been ashamed, and unravelled everything. She stammered out a feeble answer, though she knew there was very little chance of having anything to show before the end of the week. Her lack of skill was mortifying. In these bad times, everyone did what they could. Old men dug vegetable gardens and mended everything from fishing reels to fences. None of the women let a moment pass without reaching for their wool or sewing baskets. As for her father, he walked miles every day, from one house to another, attempting to console the endless stream of freshly widowed women and grieving families. And Alice’s own mother, had she lived, would have been following in his wake with what small comforts she herself could bring.

  Everyone played their part. Everyone.

  Except for Alice.

  What could she do? Too clumsy with the needles to make anything fit to sell or send. Too young to go to work, too old to stay oblivious to all the efforts round her. Why, even these ‘spiritualists’ her father so despised for trickery on those they preyed upon, did something useful.

  They brought hope to others.

  But Alice could at least offer to Mrs Coral the same plain human sympathy the woman had shown her when she had lost her mother. She hurried after as the pair started down the lane. Affecting to ignore a further hostile look from the sharp-tongued companion, Alice begged, ‘Please, Mrs Coral! Say I may come to sit with you one evening soon.’

  The woman was too steeped in grief to answer. She could not even shake her head before she was firmly pulled away.

  But she had not said no.

  A vicarage is a busy place when death is all about. It was a week before Alice tapped on the back door of The Lodge. With some relief she learned the fierce housekeeper was out and Mrs Parry had already gone to bed, pleading an aching head. Alice stoked up the dying kitchen fire to which Mrs Coral had seemed indifferent. The two sat quietly for a while as shadows loomed and danced, and rain beat on the window. Then Alice spoke of how, when she was little more than eight or nine years old, Sam tied his handkerchief around her bleeding knee and carried her home.

  His mother stirred on her small chair. ‘My Sam was a precious gift. Child, boy and man, I never knew him say a mean word or do a spiteful thing.’

  In her head Alice heard the echo of something her father often said when he came back from funerals: ‘The day they die, all men turn into saints!’ Everyone knew Sam had his faults. There was talk of his poaching, and he was never seen in church – indeed, the day he’d carried Alice home, he’d grinned as he walked past it, calling it ‘The House of Fairy Tales’. But suddenly Alice saw her father’s words for what they were – hard and contemptuous. How could a man of God be so quick to dismiss the feelings of people he knew well? Had steely righteousness sucked all the kindness from his soul? Could nothing pierce the veil of his assurance? To her astonishment, as Mrs Coral sat remembering the sweetness and goodness of her son and let herself forget the rest, Alice began to feel resentment rising inside her at her father’s stubborn lack of charity.

  After a while the strain of talking of the boy she’d lost became too much for Mrs Coral. Dabbing her eyes, she turned the conversation to the vicarage. So Alice spoke of how her mother’s room had now become her own, and how, in the neglected garden, she hoped some day to tell a valued plant from a rank weed. Mrs Coral made every effort to show interest. But grief drains all the meaning from other people’s lives, and Alice knew that nothing she could think to say was likely to distract or console her.

  Except …

  Was it the force of feeling against her father’s lack of kindness that empowered her? How else, she asked herself afterwards, could someone raised in the shadow of the pulpit dare take advantage of a foolish tale heard only a short time before? For suddenly Alice was determined to offer Mrs Coral something far more comforting than any words she might hear from the minister’s lips.

  She interrupted her own talk of efforts in the garden to say, ‘That noise. Did you hear it?’

  ‘What noise, my dear?’

  ‘That tread behind the door.’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Parry …?’

  ‘No,’ Alice said. ‘It was a man’s firm footsteps.’

  Mrs Coral shook her head. ‘But I heard nothing.’

  ‘It must be my imagination.’ Alice took up her tale about cutting the wrong shoots on the raspberry canes, then stopped again. ‘Surely you heard it this time? That creak as the door opened. That must have caught your ear.’

  ‘No, Alice. All I hear is rain and wind.’

  ‘But I could swear— Yes! There it is again. And closer! He is in the room with us!’

  ‘He?’

  Alice forced her eyes into the roundness of astonishment. ‘You don’t feel anything? You don’t feel – how can I say it best? – as if there were another in the room?’

  Mrs Coral gathered her shawl more tightly round her. ‘Another, Alice?’

  Alice said wonderingly, as if confused, ‘Not quite a person, no – but some sort of presence.’

  ‘A presence?’ She could see Mrs Coral tremble at the thought. ‘Some sort of spirit?’

  ‘If it’s a spirit,’ Alice declared, ‘then it’s a kind one, for I never had a feeling of such warmth and love steal over me out of nowhere.’

  She watched the drawn, pinched face in front of her. She saw hope spring. And Alice knew that she had led poor Mrs Coral to the point of saying it herself: ‘Then it’s my Sam come back! You see him and I don’t!’

  ‘I don’t quite see him,’ Alice said. She pressed a finger to her brow and took a chance. ‘You know my mother always said I had a strange way of sensing things that aren’t there. But all our visitor is to me right now is shadow.’ She pointed above Mrs Coral’s head. ‘There. Between you and the door.’

  Mrs Coral swung round. ‘No! I see nothing!’

  ‘You feel it, surely, though? A kind and comforting presence?’ She watched as Mrs Coral turned back in the fireside chair and closed her eyes. ‘And he’s stepped closer now. He’s still a shadow, but he smiles and stretches out a hand to touch you.’

  ‘Alice, I think I feel it on my shoulder! Yes, I am sure I do!’

  Alice thought back to Marie-Claire and Mrs Gregory. ‘He wants to tell you something. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. He wants to tell you that he’s safe and happy now. No pain can touch him. You must not be troubled. And he’ll watch over you until you join him.’

  ‘Oh, Alice! Tell him to pray that day will come soon!’

  That was a step too far.

  ‘He can’t do that. That would be very wrong.’ But what had she heard her father saying once, over a tiny baby’s grave? Oh, yes! ‘Sam wants to tell you that some lives are meant to be long and others short. But any life that has been lived in God’s good grace is a life lived to the full.’

  She watched a tear roll down the old, lined face. She watched the wrinkled fingers relax and spread on the worn arm of the chair.

  ‘And,’ Alice said, ‘he wants to tell you he’ll be back to comfort you. You’ll know whenever he’s there, and you’ll know what he wants to say to you.’

  ‘Tell him …’ Mrs Coral threw out her hands. ‘Oh, Alice! Tell him …’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Alice simply. ‘Because he’s gone.’

  It was a chilly walk back to the vicarage but Alice shiv
ered from far more than cold night air. She felt herself poisoned with guilt. The spirits of dead people did not return to comfort those they’d left behind. The idea was a nonsense, and Alice had deliberately turned herself into one of those very cheats her father railed against. She had deceived and lied, and offered false assurance to one of his flock. What had he called such people? Vultures preying on bruised souls? Should she be drummed out too?

  But then – perhaps Sam had been right! Perhaps the church’s beliefs were no more than fairy tales of a different kind. It was so hard, these days, to think there truly was a loving God. Perhaps her father was deceived as well! Perhaps she was no worse than him in the false comfort she had tried to offer.

  She had no fear her father would be told what she had done. The next day Mrs Coral was to travel to Hove to spend a few weeks with her sister. And Mrs Coral knew the Reverend Milner well enough to understand Alice’s plea for secrecy. She wouldn’t say a word.

  Still, Alice told herself she would regret what she had done for ever. She crept home through the shadows like the sinner that she feared she was, and tiptoed up the stairs as quietly as she could.

  Her father was the last man she could face on such a night.

  The weeks passed. News from the War stayed grim, and though in school assemblies Mr Abbot still had the dismal task of reading out the names of boys he’d taught, now only the sombre look on his face gave any hint of feeling. At home in the vicarage, the dark winter evenings dragged on so long that even Alice’s clumsy handiwork had time to improve. Soon it was rare for her to drop a stitch, even when turning awkward sock heels, and Mrs Parry began to praise her. ‘Such fine work, Alice! Your poor dead mother would be proud of you.’

  Of Mrs Coral there had been no sign, and Alice was relieved to hear she was still with her sister. She had no wish to see the face that would refresh the surge of guilt she felt each time she thought of what she’d done that night.

  The year turned. Up in the pulpit Reverend Milner spoke again about the lowering nature of despair. He would not call it a sin. ‘No. After all, the body and the mind can take only so much before our courage falters. But from the dark lair of despondency, we must all trust that one day …’